It's a new idea to me, since I know very little about cargo van expediting. Have you heard about those new Sprinters? I wonder if they will catch on. Hard to imagine anyone wanting to give up their proven Fords.
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- Thread starter cjmitch
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It's a new idea to me, since I know very little about cargo van expediting. Have you heard about those new Sprinters? I wonder if they will catch on. Hard to imagine anyone wanting to give up their proven Fords.
http://www.expeditersonline.com/forum/general-expediter-forum/43371-cv-tear-drop-camper.html
Looks like someone stole your identity 2 years ago.
Hmmm... Somehow I'm not surprised. When I look at your avatar, I think either a tractor/trailer or else one very huge straight truck, and without knowing more I'm favoring the idea of the tractor/trailer.
Vanning works a bit different. It's relatively easy to pull up to a shipper, back your 53' trailer into the dock and be a professional throughout the entire deal. It's quite another thing to pull up in a Chevy CV, drop your camper trailer, back up the ramp and get loaded, then pull out, re-connect the trailer and all the rest of it. At some point, professionalism disappears along with any chance this customer will ever want to see you again. He wants the freight to be on the way, he doesn't want to see you take an extra fifteen minutes fussing with your travel-trailer getting it road-ready.
I used to have a boat. I know that hooking and unhooking, testing lights and so on takes time. Time that you don't have while still on the customer's property. If you dropped the trailer off-property, that takes even more of your already too-short time. I had a small trailer, it didn't have its own brakes. Most of the travel-camping trailers have brakes and they have to be checked before rolling too. It goes with the territory.
Moot is right: If you want to be comfortable and logging isn't an issue, why not get a truck that's set up for that and be done with it? In any of the CVs-- including the big Sprinters-- we have to compromise quite a bit.
It's a straight truck. Click the truck photo and specs link in my signature below for details.
Vanners do not log in most cases, so in what ways does time become an issue? To hear many vanners tell it here in the Open Forum, lots of sitting goes on. What kind of weekly run counts do busy vans typically have?
OK. My van has a GVWR of 8600 lbs. It doesn't take much of a trailer to push it up over 10,000 combined GVWR. Now, at that point you do have to deal with DOT logging, HOS and so on. Even before then though the issues of the time it takes to drop the trailer and re-connect it when you have a job running has to be considered. There's no escaping the fact that it takes time to find a place to drop the trailer, secure it (you want to be able to prevent theft), then come back and re-connect the trailer. I never could bring the time for placing the tongue onto the ball, connecting the safety chains (required by law-- no getting around it) connecting the light harness and checking the lights to much under fifteen minutes. Add checking the brakes for a heavier trailer and it can chew up time. Now, once you've dropped the freight and you're on your own clock it may not matter so much. When you're on the company's dime though, I suspect it matters a good deal. They want that freight to move and that's not going to happen while you're fussing with the trailer.
One thought occurred to me earlier. What about insurance on this lash-up? It's not such a problem when you're on your own and running a camping trip to the North Woods. Most any insurance company will cover you then. We're talking of running this set-up in commercial service though and I wonder if the insurance companies will even touch this. It's not a standard type of deal, so somebody would have to ask if it's do-able from an insurance standpoint.
Why not? The hot shot gang does the trailer gig...
It's not hours of service or having a lot of time to kill, it's meeting the pickup and delivery times where it becomes an issue.
A real world example... you're sitting in your travel trailer at the Flying J in Oak Grove, KY. At 1430 you get a call about a load, ready now, picking up in Hopkinsville by 1500, going 315 loaded to Vance, AL, the Mercedes Benz plant, delivers at 2100.
OK, it's 13 miles to the pickup, 15 minutes. If you turn the key and roll right now you'll get there at a quarter till. But you've got to get you and the van ready to roll. That's 10 minutes if you only do an eyeball pretrip to make sure all of your tires appear to have air in them, and all the other stuff that takes a few minutes to do in order to roll on a pickup. Now you're at 5 till. Oops! What to do with the trailer? You don't have another 5 or 10 minutes to track down the manager only to likely hear you cannot drop the trailer in the Flying J parking lot, so you chance it and pull away with the trailer in tow.
You get to the pickup at 1455 and send your arrival. Luckily, there is room to unhook the trailer and leave it somewhere on the lot while you get loaded, and it only takes 10 minutes to do that. You're hoping that it's OK, because you just did it without asking permission. Turns out it's OK and they don't get noticeably annoyed with you. You go in and wait for them to finish the paperwork, and then wait for them to get you loaded. You finally get loaded at 1520, then after hooking up the trailer you depart the shipper at 1530.
310 miles to go, about 5 hours to get it there, 5.5 hours to the delivery time. You already know that you will not be able to haul that camper into the Mercedes plant, so you've got to figure out where you can drop it. There's a Pilot close by, as well as a Petro and a Flying J 20 minutes away that are right in the way. But good luck in getting permission from any of those to drop a camping trailer. There's bound to be someplace, though, you'll just have to figure it out on the way or after you get there.
Whoops, Nashville rush hour traffic! It could be worse, you only lose 20 minutes going through town. But the construction just south of town costs you another 5 minutes. Now you're on pace to arrive at 2055 with a 2100 protect time. Cutting it close.
You're in luck. You call ahead and miraculously obtain permission from the Flying J in McCalla to drop the trailer for one hour. You get down there and by the time you get off the Interstate and get to the J and unhook and secure the trailer in the sudden torrential downpour and get back on your way you've only lost 15 minutes.
You arrive at the 2100 delivery at 2110, 10 minutes late.
And that was a trip where everything went relatively well. If you hadn't pre-secured a place to drop that trailer you'd have been screwed. And you can see how time becomes not only an issue, but the fire in which we burn.
I think I got acid reflux over that..................
I wonder at being able to drop and pick up a travel-trailer in only ten minutes. It usually takes a little longer than that. Oh, don't forget to throw in: When you do the light check, for some reason the left turn signal on the trailer doesn't work so you have to trouble-shoot that. If you're lucky it was just a blown bulb, you replace it and you're on your way. If you're not lucky you'll have to check the connections between the van and the trailer, the connections in the tail-light and so on until you find the trouble. You just know this is going to happen when you already don't have time to fool around with it, it's the evil way of trailer lighting.
While I'm on the subject of evil trailer lighting, here's something to chew on from my own experience. Boat-trailer lighting is simple, four-wire lighting, color coded. White is ground, brown is running lights and yellow and green are left and right turn signals. If your tow vehicle is wired in standard American fashion it's not too difficult to wire up. If, however, you have a vehicle wired in European fashion, the stop light is on a separate circuit from the turn signals and that requires one of two things. First, if it's professionally done, the trailer shop will probably put in a digital splitter device. It takes the five-wire European connections and puts out four-wire American through a system known only to some gnome in Electronicland who laughs evilly every time he makes a new device. Sooner or later this device is going to mess up and when it does, it will take out your tow-vehicle lights as well as your trailer lights. I learned to hate that thing with a passion. The other way is to use a wire harness that gives you an extra wire. Now you'll have to wire the trailer for five-wire running lights instead of four, with the extra wire carrying the stop-light circuit. You will also have to install a second set of tail-lights which exist for no other purpose than to be stop-lights. It's a bit diddly to do it but in my experience it's better. It won't mess up the tow vehicle like the electronic device will. Something extra to chew on, and maybe-- just maybe-- save someone some trouble.
While I'm on the subject of evil trailer lighting, here's something to chew on from my own experience. Boat-trailer lighting is simple, four-wire lighting, color coded. White is ground, brown is running lights and yellow and green are left and right turn signals. If your tow vehicle is wired in standard American fashion it's not too difficult to wire up. If, however, you have a vehicle wired in European fashion, the stop light is on a separate circuit from the turn signals and that requires one of two things. First, if it's professionally done, the trailer shop will probably put in a digital splitter device. It takes the five-wire European connections and puts out four-wire American through a system known only to some gnome in Electronicland who laughs evilly every time he makes a new device. Sooner or later this device is going to mess up and when it does, it will take out your tow-vehicle lights as well as your trailer lights. I learned to hate that thing with a passion. The other way is to use a wire harness that gives you an extra wire. Now you'll have to wire the trailer for five-wire running lights instead of four, with the extra wire carrying the stop-light circuit. You will also have to install a second set of tail-lights which exist for no other purpose than to be stop-lights. It's a bit diddly to do it but in my experience it's better. It won't mess up the tow vehicle like the electronic device will. Something extra to chew on, and maybe-- just maybe-- save someone some trouble.
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OK. I understand the example of a run that by definition has an immediate pick up and tight schedule. My question was about van sitting and weekly run count. When I see vans clustered at a truck stop, the drivers do not seem to be poised with their feet in the starting blocks ready to spring into action at a moment's notice.
In a real-world week, how many immediate pick ups with tight delivery schedules will a van operator complete? In that same week, how many loads will be dispatched with more time to work with?
On Monday morning, Diane and I got a phone call for an immediate pick up, on which we were rolling within ten minutes of getting the call. This morning, we got two load offers that now have us running from now to Friday. On those two loads, we have a full day to get to the first pick up and we know our schedule exactly after that.
Is it the same for vans? Or is it that every van load is go, go, go, now, now, now, and you don't have a minute to spare?
Seems most my loads are p/u now deliver straight thru...It always seems to me in a CV the more the p/u time is pushed out..( p/u next morning... etc.) More likely it will dry run...unless it is a really good load I am not going to sit and wait for it..too many other offers...
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I've never had a crazy-tight scheduled run. But, I've never been on a run where messing with a camping trailer was going to be high on the list of things I want to have to do, either. Disconnecting and securing the trailer-- it is possible, you can buy tongue locks and these days you can buy a boot for your trailer wheel-- is fairly straightforward. It's re-connecting and getting it ready for the road that can present trouble. That's when you find out about that left-turn signal. Or the brake that doesn't work quite right. Or the low tire. Each time you re-connect the trailer, you really need to pre-trip the entire rig. It consumes more time than you would have taken without messing with a camping trailer.
Note: In my last reply, I mentioned trailer wiring. The example I used is standard four-wire boat trailer wiring. Campers use more wires, six seems to be the number that sticks. One of these is devoted to the electric brake, and I think-- I am not sure-- the remaining wire may be to power the interior lights. In any case, RV trailer wiring is a black art only clearly understood by the evil gnomes who design it, and we poor users have to try to unravel their evil designs as best we can--- in the rain, when we're running short on time.
Edit; add-on: I don't like not knowing about this, so I looked it up. Below is a link to standard trailer wiring. Learn it, love it, live it if you insist on pulling a camper behind you. Be warned, it's never as easy as it looks and it will go wrong just when you least need for it to.
http://www.etrailer.com/faq-wiring.aspx
Note: In my last reply, I mentioned trailer wiring. The example I used is standard four-wire boat trailer wiring. Campers use more wires, six seems to be the number that sticks. One of these is devoted to the electric brake, and I think-- I am not sure-- the remaining wire may be to power the interior lights. In any case, RV trailer wiring is a black art only clearly understood by the evil gnomes who design it, and we poor users have to try to unravel their evil designs as best we can--- in the rain, when we're running short on time.
Edit; add-on: I don't like not knowing about this, so I looked it up. Below is a link to standard trailer wiring. Learn it, love it, live it if you insist on pulling a camper behind you. Be warned, it's never as easy as it looks and it will go wrong just when you least need for it to.
http://www.etrailer.com/faq-wiring.aspx
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That's because, generally speaking, vans have more down time than driving time, and the zombies who are forever sitting behind the wheel waiting to turn the key at a moment's notice can be sitting there for days. That's why we call them zombies. They just sit there, staring out the windshield waiting, waiting, waiting.
But, when the call does come, no matter when it is, you have to be ready to roll within 15 minutes in most cases.
Load counts vary a lot. Could be one this week, five or six next week. The average number of loads per week for an average van is 3-4.
There are a few loads with a short deadhead that doesn't pickup for several hours, because they won't have the freight ready until then. Likewise, there are loads that pickup, and if you deliver direct you will show up many hours before the consignee opens for delivery. But unlike a bigger truck where larger loads are often booked well im advance and are more "exclusive use of the truck" oriented, the one, two, three skid loads of a van tend to be more of a last minute, hurry-up, emergency nature where there is very little wiggle room on the pickup or delivery time. Most delivery times are calculated at 45, 47 or 50 MPH, and that's it, deliver direct, ASAP.
So more that a run count per week, it's probably better to look at a percentage. It will be different at each carrier, of course, depending in their customer base, but when I was at Panther I would estimate probably 80% of the loads I ran were of the tight-schedule variety. With Load One, it's more like 95% (larger percentage of automotive freight).
That's typical of a van. Good thing you didn't have a trailer to deal with, huh?
While more common in a straight and tractor-trailer, having a day or more to pick ip a load is rare, and being booked on more than one load is so rare I could count the times on one hand with fingers left over. Once in a great while we'll have a round trip load, so I guess that counts as two booked loads. But those are rare, too.
By and large, more often than not, yes, it's go, go, go. Longer loads of more than about 700 miles gives you a little more flexibility in being able get needed rest along the way if necessary, or to get there early, due to being able to drive long distances at considerably higher speeds than the scheduled transit time (65 MPH speed versus a 50 MPH booking time, so you can make up 10-15 minutes every hour you drive), but the scheduled delivery time is what it is, and it's usually scheduled straight through at those transit times. Rush hour, construction, weather and fuel stops can eat away at that. Having to set aside additional time on each and every load to deal with a camping trailer could very well mean you are late more often than you are on time, to either the pickup or the delivery, or both. The percentage of tightly scheduled loads simply make having to deal with a camping trailer a failure in the making.
Understood and accepted.
Now, for the purpsoes of discussion, and for the fun of it, let's talk about a van-pulling-camper situation set up to be a success in the making.
I'm thinking CDL driver, willing to log, has own authority, and has sales skills and/or broker relationships such that van freight (not automotive) can be found to haul on a more relaxed schedule. Maybe something like a dedicated cross-country run or round trips from point A to B and back to A. Or maybe a weekly run around several stops and back to the origin. Is it within the realm of possibility to find customers and freight that would be OK with the van-pulling-camper?
If you've got a friend in the business, I suppose it's possible. You'd have to work out the details with the friend, of course. At that point you're probably not doing expedited as we understand it, but of course expedited is only one of the business models out there and by no means the only one.
It's unlikely, but is certainly within the realm of possibility. As noted, it wouldn't be exactly expediting in the normal sense, and would be a niche that wouldn't work on a wide industry scale. But for a niche success, probably a more realistic scenario would be to drive a Sprinter RV conversion and tow a small freight trailer.
They also have some really nice RVs built on a Ford F-450 chassis where the rear of the RV can be custom built to accommodate roll-up, barn or a clamshell door and 3-6 skids, leaving the rest for a nice living quarters. Kind of like your truck, actually.
Isn't that the topic of this thread and the Tear Drop camper thread? Why not buy a truck where you will have more space for luxury living, more room for freight all while being dock high and avoiding the hassles and legalities of pulling a camper trailer?
There is no reason not to that I see. It is what Diane and I did and many others. However, I am intrigued by pkolle's inquiries and his persistence in making them, like he does not want to take no for an answer. I like that. It is fun to see someone not just ask for advice but to test it after it is received. I don't see him being disrespectful in doing that, just rigorous in his inquiry.
So, pkolle, you have received a lot of information in response to the questions you asked. What are you thinking now about the van-pulling-camper idea?
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